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In 1939 when I was ten years old we lived at Netley on Southampton Water. That August we went to the Isle of Wight for a holiday with my Aunt and cousins. When my Father and Uncle were supposed to join us, they turned up only to tell us that we must come home immediately, and that war was imminent. We were disappointed. Then a few days later we all sat listening to the radio to hear we were at war.

War brought about many changes. School was very different. We only had half days at school as we had to share our classrooms with children from other schools that had been moved out of the danger area. Sometimes we could go home and play with our friends in the afternoons, but other times we had to go to the park and continue studying outside during the nice weather. One weekend a bomb hit the domestic science block. Luckily no one was injured and we were delighted because we no longer had to study home economics!

When we were not at home we had to carry our gas masks at all times. I carried mine in the box across my chest. The gas mask had a really horrible smell and I hated wearing it! We also had to carry identity cards and some of us had identity disks. Mine was a silver bracelet with my name and identity number on it. This was in case you were hurts while away from your family.

Air raid shelters went up soon after war started. We had a field next door to our house and the shelter was built on that and we shared it with the next door neighbours. When the air raid sirens went off we would go down there. My mum made me a siren suit just like Winston Churchill’s, which looks a bit like a bomber jacket and trousers but all in one. Mine was made out of a blanket and I would wear it every time we went into the shelter. The neighbours were a family of five; mum, dad, two girls and a small boy. When we were in the shelter we would sit in the entrance and watch all the fighter planes up above. They would not see us as it was always night when the sirens went off. I do not remember being frightened and we would always have a thermos of tea, and blankets to curl up in. I think we felt safer because we were all together.

I do not really remember feeling hungry because of the rationing, while we were in Netley we used to keep hens so we had plenty of eggs. We would sometimes have too many eggs so we would preserve them in isinglass. We would put all the fresh eggs in a bucket and poor the isinglass over them. We could get dried egg which could be used for cooking and to make omelettes but they weren’t very nice.

We would sometimes eat a hen, and I would watch Mum drawing the bird, taking all the feathers off and then pulling it’s insides out ready for cooking.

If we were in Southampton when the sirens went, we would have to use the air raid shelter at Bargate. The Bargate was part of the old town, the original boundary for the town. The building had two great archways on either end and the shelter was underneath them. Once, the cold store, full of butter, got hit in Southampton by an incendiary bomb, which caused it to go up in flames. It burnt for days and the smell was carried a long way.

In 1941 we moved to Brockehurst in the New Forest. Dad worked for the war office so it was evacuated to a safer place. It was about this time that Coventry was badly hit and that was where me Aunt and cousins lived. My Uncle worked in an aircraft factory and he had to ask his friends and save up his supplies so he could get enough petrol to drive his family to stay with us to keep them safe. Their house had been hit but he still had to go back to Coventry to work.

The school in Brockenhurst had an air raid shelter and we sometimes had to do spelling tests or mental arithmetic, we thought that was unfair. The school was cold in the winter and we only had a small heater in the classroom. We were told to run around the playground if we were cold.

We also would have a third of a pint of milk each in the mornings. The milk would be frozen during the winter and so they had to put all the bottles round the heater to thaw. They didn’t taste very nice after that! When we had cookery lessons at school we would have to bring in our rations to cook with.

Clothes were rationed by then and mother used to make all mine. We would always ‘make do and mend’. If we had grown out of anything woolly we would unstitch it and re-knit something else. One week we were told about a curtain factory shop where the fabric wasn’t rationed. We bought a length of a light floral fabric and I made myself a summer dress with it.

In 1942/43 we moved to Bournemouth because Dad’s office moved again. Soon after we arrived it was not just Mum, dad and me (my Aunt and cousins had left by then), but we also had my grandmother and two soldiers. The house in Bournemouth was very large with three downstairs reception rooms. We turned one into a bedroom for Gran, and the fourth upstairs bedroom housed the two soldiers. Mum was very good at cooking and managed to spread out and share everybody’s rations so that we had enough food. My father would grow lots of vegetables so that helped.

When the war finally came to an end we were all very relieved, lots of street parties were held. Food was still rationed for several more years so we still had to be careful but it was so nice to go to bed and know we weren’t going to be woken up to go to the shelters.

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